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WEBSTER IS MAN AND STATESMAN. 



BY 



, » 



C. A. BARTOL. 



r 




WEBSTER AS MAN AND STATESMAN 



A SERMON 



BY 



C. A. BARTOL 



IX WEST CHURCH, BOSTON, SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 1S82 



BOSTON 

PRESS OF (;E0. H. ELLIS, 141 FRANKLIN STREET 

1882 



SERMON. 



" If a matter arise too hard for thee betwixt plea and plea, thou shalt come 
unto the judge." — Deuteronomy xvii., 8, 9. 

Most of us are tried on the spot and at the moment in our 
own day and generation, we having, in our bubble-like being 
on earth, a domestic and possibly biographic, but no historic 
significance, only melting into the immense sea of humanity 
or general mass of mankind. But there are mountainous 
men, rare as the peaks of the Alps or the Andes, — Moses, 
Socrates, Ctesar, Bonaparte, — ever standing at the bar of the 
human mind ; and, among ringing celebrations and contradic- 
tions, the image formed of any one and all of these giants of 
genius and power concerns the virtue of every individual, so 
that I need no apology for my attempt at an estimate in the 
pulpit of the claim to honor and imitation of an extraor- 
dinary man of the West, one of the chief Americans, since 
Benjamin Franklin in the civil sphere, New England's most 
distinguished son, of a permanent fame whose quality it may 
take some ages still of reflection to decide, yet our opinion of 
whom has an interest for our character now, and to whom 
the Scripture figure of a tribunal of judgment to appeal to is 
ai)pro[)riate on account of the diverse and opposite pleas, one 
against him, another in his behalf, there never having been 
a case in a public career in these United States of a person 
ill which plaintiif and defendant alike more required a judge. 

It is thought b}^ some that judgment is not to be had or is 
an inq)ertinence and offence on the part of us little and 
connnon people for transcendent men. Charlemagne, Peter 
the Great, Napoleon, — they are phenomenal, elemental, de- 
monic, from God and Nature on an errand, in comparison 
with which their faults are unnotieeablo trifies, they being 



a law to themselves to do as they please, or as the power 
that hurled them like thiiiiderbolts into the world, or un- 
capped them as volcanoes of the globe, may will or allow. 
W'lii'ii I criticised Goethe for his immoralities, Thackeray 
answered, "We cannot judge him, he is too great." But, if 
no single Liliput could overcome Gulliver, all the Lilipu- 
tians could and did bind him down ; and, if none of us ordi- 
nary folk have the privilege of the bench for such an intel- 
lectual superior as Webster, he must abide the verdict of 
time and the moral sense. Nay, in the great court of the 
spirit, the humblest conscience may accuse him and the 
weakest intelligence be a witness ; and, in the argument or 
the sentence on the facts of the record, every honest advo- 
cate will have w^eight in that mingled absolution and con- 
demnation which in their inevitable imperfection the might- 
iest must meet. 

There being then in the case of Mr. Webster the plaintiff, 
defendant, and judge, let me remark that, as the usual length 
of a whole human life has elapsed since the suit against him 
was brought, the passions of either party may be supposed 
to have grown cool, as, in many a mortal frame they once 
agitated, they have been laid away with his in the dust. 
That he was " a man without character "' ; that " every drop 
of his blood looked downward " ; that he was " Samson shorn 
of the PliLJistines to grind in their mill": and ••Ichabod," a 
glory not only dimmed, but gone, — such rhetoric of poetry 
or prose, though provoked by its object's shortcomings, its 
authors might not care to repeat as the full tale and measure 
of the man's dues ; and, if they should, the long annals of 
the land and the considerate equity of a loved and delivered 
nation, the mercy of God, if not the charity of liis children, 
would convict the censors as extravagant and unjust. For 
this man, Webster, loved his country, if ever iikiu did. No 
iiialigncr of liim ever loved her more: and. in her sore ex- 
tremity, he gave us, restored to us. half-created for us. a 
country to love. The country, the Constitution, the Union, 
inider his appeals, started out from the condition of abstrac- 
tions, the I'onii of generalities, the jKiper and ink of the 



printed page, into living sliape, sensitive reality, as things 
to love, live, or die for, that had been drowning in the flood 
of custom, but were resuscitated by an aboriginality of treat- 
ment in speech never surpassed on these shores. 

I was in college, a boy of seventeen, when the winds first 
blew liis name and his re})ly to Hayne to my eyes and ears' 
and I remember the inspiration that, swept, as from the 
neighboring pine woods, llnough all the students' hearts and 
lips, there being no ambition but to declaim the choice pas- 
sages from that sublimest Congressional discourse on the 
college boards, as I suppose they were spouted with that 
young zeal which no manly fervor can exceed, on the stage 
of ever}^ academy and embryo university throughout the 
North. We, the boys, scarce knew we had a country before. 
As the Revolutionary War, that of 1812, and, in our own 
day, of secession, woke from sleej) or apathy the patriotic 
consciousness till the parallels and meridians of American 
latitude and longitude (quivered with the feeling, so this 
battle, this victory, on the floor of the Senate, startled us 
into citizensliip, made our hearts burn within us, uncovered 
the graves of our forefathers for a resurrection of their souls, 
and raked the live coals from the ashes of our own hearts. 
Any flaming affection may sink into cold, inanimate decay 
for a time. This man stirred the patriotic embers till they 
glowed again on all our hearths, in all our hearts. He 
voiced us to that splendid harmony, as an untuned or silent 
organ is voiced. He wrought liis own temper into us like 
leaven; and thenceforth a child could not be born on the 
prairie whom the gracious ferment even in its cradle did not 
reach, nor a settler wield his axe in the far-off Western wilds 
but the stroke was an echo from the words that shook the 
capitol : nor any succeeding generation rid itself of the 
haunting memory fifty years after to this day. Perhaps that 
conflict, issuing as it did, nerved us for the one to ensue in 
thirty years. That word sharpened the federal sword. He 
meant it should prevent and keep it in its sheath. Unity of 
liberty according to law, which he promoted and cemented, 
made the victory possible and certain, if it did not stir tlie 



6 

strife. He Avas the uuly inau capable fur tlial !?ervite ; and 
if, in that senatorial tournament, we had been unhorsed, Avho 
shall sa}^ we should, in an(»ther succeeding tilt of blood and 
carnage, have kept our seat? It is said that Moltke, the 
Prussian General who defeated Austria, won the fight with 
pins on tlie map, tracing out his military plans before he won 
it by river and })lain with guns. And. in the encounters of 
the North and South, Webster for the former, Hayne and 
Calhoun for the latter, liberty and union were rescued, 
slavery and secession, had they in that their hour but known 
it, were foredoomed. 

Nor let it be said this was but mouth-virtue and a cun- 
ning, logical farce. I have heard Mr. Webster, by a puny 
commentator, called a rhetorician and an actor, as in a 
theatre. His words were acts, and, like Luther's, "half- 
battles." They were hewn out of the granite of his native 
hills, as God hewed him out of the rock. His theatre reached 
from gulf to river and river to sea. The thing he said eould 
not have been said otherwise than he said it. and his savins: 
was the thing articulated into air. incorporated with every 
breeze on our banner, with reverberation never to cease in 
the atmosphere or in human hearing to die. He did not. 
you say, feel it sincerely? I answer: He feels anything 
most who feels so as to best express it and put it into ever- 
lasting form, as Webster excels and stands head and shouUl- 
ers, like Saul, above his fellows, in having done. All honor 
to Adams and Sumner and Andrews, and a hundred ol' their 
comrades and compeers, in the linal crisis more faithful^ 
within the constitutional lines, than he. But not one of 
them nor all of tliiMu ])ut together ever s})ake like him. or 
pill love of rouiitiy, loNc of liberty, or even hatred of slavery, 
into language so lasting and true, like an eml)odiment and 
incarnation, as this calm, continent, and continental orator 
iliil. He strin-k out the idea as a sculptor does a statue from 
the marble block. He ranks wiili renowned sjieakers of all 
tiiiu's and lands: with Demosthenes, that doubled-ui) list of 
Alliens against Philip, and Cicero stretching Catiline on the 
i"ack, and l»urkc jilacing Waricii llastings in the pillory. If 



tlie Greek jn^essed his autao-(»nist like a boxer in a straighter 
line, if the Roman amplified his theme with a more sumptu- 
ous-rolling diction, and if the Englishman pierced his periods 
with a more pervasive, poetic, and pliildsophii; light, till his 
(quotable page was transparent as amber and solid as steel, 
not one of them better reconciled the ntmantic in feeling 
with the classic in i'onn. In Homeric simplicity of style, 
Webster has in any de})artment no American peer. He was 
objective^ and had always an object, sat close to reality, never 
wandered and seldom sentimentalized, or, like a basket-maker, 
wove fancy work. We have had writers and speakers of 
more active, if not more vivid, imagination, taking much 
l)ains to gather and cluster their gems of imagery and allu- 
sion, till our eyes were almost put out with the glitter, and 
we would have been glad of some blue mental glasses to 
keep us from being blinded with the dazzling and elaborate 
display. But Webster's is, like that of the old Athenian 
sage, " reasoned truth," well so called by the Grecian his- 
torian, Mr. Grote. It grows, it warms, it convinces, it com- 
pels. We listened to him, says Judge Stor}^, in the Dart- 
mouth College case, the first hour with perfect admiration, 
the second with perfect astonishment, the third with perfect 
delight. Not often does this advocate break bounds into 
enthusiastic statement : at once, he is self-recalled. His fire 
is not in the air, but in the furnace, driving the engine- 
wheels. His style is like that of some great singer, Braham 
or Titiens, an easy and necessary and irresistible force. His 
argument is the pressure of fate. His eloquence, without 
any approach to rivalry in our time, Hows like the cataract 
of Niagara from the level of his mind with equal and unvary- 
ing tide, because its supply is from such a broad, unfailing 
stretch of waters behind. Those who commonly figure on 
the political platform are pygmies to liini: I mean not in 
their fidelity of intent, but in the manner and port and 
strain of their discourse. And I say this, not for invidious 
contrast, but to recommend the perusal of these master- 
pieces of conception and conq^osition, left like headlands the 
ocean has withdrawn from. Let ns sliidv them in onr homes 



8 

and seminaries and schools, among all men and all women 
who would, in their emancipation and new prerogatives, 
comprehend the nature of our government and vitally con- 
ceive the country, not as so much territorv, but as our 
common mother, organic, living, undying, and dear to filial 
hearts. F(n- this same Webster talk to his peers, neighbors, 
constituents, and friends, in i)rivate and in public, is, in this 
idea at least of a great, precious, beloved country, consistent 
throughout. He has wedded, welded, amalgamated the breath 
of his mouth with it beyond any other man. so that many of 
his expressions seem the great dumb Parent's own utterance, 
as though her rivers and plains and hills at last were ani- 
mate, spoke, and found their tongue. Surely, Massachusetts 
opened her mouth in him, once her true representative and 
uncrowned king! Bunker Hill Monument on Buld^er Hill 
will not outlast the orations that commenced and completed 
the granite obelisk over the martyr-blood. The vibratictn 
will never stop, of the Constitution by him exi)ounded. and 
still more of the Union defended in congressional halls, unless 
the pillars of both Union and Constitution with those marble 
columns shall sink. The eulogy on Adams and Jefferson 
cannot be forgotten while they are remembered in the world; 
I'or it is, after their own deeds, their best remembrance. 
^Vnd, as the struggles and achievements of their eulogist 
were, in the same civil arena, equal to their own in impor- 
tance, they will scarce be of inferior fame. 

"No one man," says the Latin motto, "can do every sort 
of thing"; and, great as was Mr. Webster's reserved p(»\ver. 
and though he had in him nion- nnisic than he ever made, 
yet his big heart went so into this one jnu-pose to })reserve 
and unite the nation there seemed not blodd enough left for 
that humanity which is the larger aim. lif \\;is American, 
not cosmopolitan. I lis spiritual circulation was imperfect. 
With all his 01ym})ian, transcendent, and overtopi)ing fiont. 
there was a hole in his liead, so heavy we wondered how 
he ct)uld carry it tludui-h the street. "He was a walkins; 
cathedral," said Thomas Carlyle ; but. as at Cologne until 
lately, tlic spire was left out. "No man lan he as wisi- as 



Webster looks," said S3alney Smith; yet in the end his 
wisdom failed. The Spartan messenger, with his news from 
the field of triumph, delivered his message and fell dead at 
the city gate. Did Mr. Webster's strength sulHce only for 
his athletic race, — not to announce success in war, but to 
huider and postpone the conflict he apprehended and fore- 
saw, and to avoid which he was willing the rights of millions 
should be made the dismal and iniquitous price? I must 
fain with reluctant sorrow own that, as to his part in the 
Fugitive Slave Bill, History, sitting associate justice on the 
bench now for a long average period of the length of human 
life, gives sentence against him without appeal. I know 
that, as respondent in his own case, he asked with what face 
we could demand fidelity in the South to the tariff and 
revenue laws, and ourselves not obey the requisition to re- 
turn those miserable wretches running to the pole-star to 
escape from their bonds. But I submit that the cases were 
not parallel. It was measuring life and liberty against a 
property tax ; and, to use his own language in the famous 
Salem Knapp case, it was weighing " so many ounces of 
blood against so many ounces of gold," Besides, though 
we w^ere shut up to the Constitution, we were not thereby 
bound under any oath, human or divine, to the special 
legislation of inference and prudence and compromise and 
commercial calculation which included the infamous bill. 
That capitulation the strictest construction did not com- 
mand. In a former and worthier mood, he had told the 
South slavery existed a local institution by local law; but 
the procedure he at last consented to would have universal- 
ized it in the land. To make us, in the free latitudes, slave- 
catchers, was to reduce the ])rinci})le of obedience to govern- 
ment to the moral absurd. Like Napoleon, in a different 
way, he attacked that moral sentiment which is a foe, as 
one says, " not subject to casualty " ; and he went down 
Ijefore its sentence, as Hajme and Calhoun fell beneath his 
lance, when put in test for its behoof. Far away from the 
spirit or any binding letter in the Constitution bail he roved 
or travelled indeed, when he ridiculed the Higher Law as 



10 

above the Blue Hills or Alleghauies (»r an eagle's flight. 
But the thunderbolt and aerolite stay not in the flrmament. 
They descend to the ground ; and safety bids us stand from' 
under a meteoric stone when we see it come ! An impious 
hand attracts the lightning whieh it defies ; and Webster 
was killed b}^ the conscience he provoked. He committed 
suicide, or something in him broke. 

Yet consider his apology. He said (»r thought, and had 
persuaded himself, there was no other way to forestall dis- 
union and civil war. '' Over that precipice full of blood and 
darkness," he did not wish to hang. Beyond the veil of a 
united country, he could not bear to look. From the tre- 
mendous luany-bladed surgery of civil war, as from the worst 
woe, he shrank. He had not — and who had? — the prophet's 
eye to see, after a five years' war and the sacrifice of five 
hundred thousand lives, a country rising from the appalling 
atonement of blood, — a phcenix out of ashes, a Lazarus from 
the sepulchre, without a bondman in all its bounds. Can he 
not be forgiven for recoiling fi'om the red sea whose farther 
shore he could not behold ? 

Yet what an opportunity he had, and missed! It was as 
if a star fell. In his argument at the trial of Judge Pres- 
cott, he said he was willing to speak not only as a lawyer, 
but as a num. Would ho had so spoken in his great place 
for four millions of ni^n, women, and children I But his 
seventh of March speech was the rehearsing of a funeral 
oration over the grave of a nation in imagination disunited 
and dead, his faith oven in the country not being strong 
enuuoli. ll was a sad. dishoartonod. and depressing utter- 
ance, low-toned and in ihal minor key which faith and 
courage never use. True things rather than pleasant — 

'■'•vera pro ffratis" — was his dodicatit t' tho sjH'oi-h to 

this Connnonwoalth. IWit tliry wfio ]iloas:iiil to tyrants. 
disagreeable to republicans, true to none. His uiaintaining 
the right of petition to abolish slavery in the District of 
('olunil)ia was uoldcr than his sulunitting to it in all our 
borders as o\ii- ]iolitii;il doom ami tho •• immodioahlo 
wound ■■ of tho social system, as ho said i»y sonic it was 



11 

called. It must be confessed, in the morals of statesnian- 
slii]) he took the utilitarian ground, that we must be gov- 
erned by visible or probable consequences, and that there 
is no absolute place in our nature to stand on and lu^hl the 
fort against plain coriuptiun, invading wrong and shame. 
He tlu)ught — and how many of the clerical cloth con- 
curred in tlie view ! — that it were better some human 
beings should be forced back to unpaid work in the cotton- 
field or rice-swamp than that the federal bond should be 
weakened or a State secede. Yet, if an American citizen 
is oppressed in Egypt, or emissaries of the Southern Con- 
federacy seized on board a British ship, England or the 
United States covers liiin. on sea or land, with the Hag; 
and, if they be not surrendered, will go to war against the 
power that would hurt a hair of their head. And where- 
fore? Because it is expedient or right? But pursue, per- 
secute, seize, hale away the black ! He has no friends ! 
Has Providence a grudge against perfection in any man, 
that the bio-oest brain among us should have been so flawed 
that even by his own platform — to say nothing of the basis 
of rectitude — he cannot be sustained ? 

I do not join with those who charge him with consciously 
bad motives for his course, with throwing in his soul in 
Satan's game, as a bid for the Presidency, which no doubt 
lie wanted, and should, without any auction, have had. 
Who does not know that not typhus, but Presidential, is 
the fever, worse than the Potomac malaria, in Washington? 
All the prominent politicians — Clay, Calhoun, Seward, 
Greeley — wanted to be President. Mr. Sumner, the incor- 
ruptible, to whose hands never stuck one grain of the 
treasury gold, it is said, wanted to be President. AVas he 
therefore to blame? But that Mr. Webster sold himself 
outright for any pronussory note of the presidential chair 
there is no proof, and with me no belief. It was said his vote 
was bought, too, by the cotton lords of the North. But he 
was no miser, was careless in C(dlecting his dues and in 
paying liis debts, as he understood better the legal than the 
moral rights of property; but. had he been avaricious, he 



12 

might have had a hoard from liis profession a huiidred-fohl 
beyond all the manufacturers lent or gave. In his nature, he 
gravitated to the truth, ''could not argue a bad cause 
even comparatively well," as everybody in court knew at 
once, in five minutes, said his associate, whether Abraham 
Lincoln considered his case good. 

But was not Webster intemperate and profligate, incorrect 
in private life, " a drunkard at the helm '' of the Ship of 
State ? His works, so constant and vast, were not — never 
could have been — those of an habitual sot. Was he a show 
tigure? Did he wear a blue coat with bright buttons? I 
saw him many times, and I remember his presence and his 
accent better than his costume. 

It was tlie most impressive figure I ever did Ijehold. 
People turned to look at him in the street. He had the 
gait of a Titan, the poise of a planet. Aught trivial, out 
of place, he could not abide. "Ma}^ it please your Honor. T 
should like to know how long is tlie United States Court to 
be entertained with the buffoonery of this witness?" he 
inquired of the Bench, which was smiling while spectators 
laughed at an Irish wit. At once, on the whole company 
fell gravity like the grave. He is said to have looked an 
uncomfortable Avitness out of the court room, pursuing him 
with his eyes. An inveterate punster having annoyed him 
in the car, he remarked, " The smallest faculty with which it 
has i)leased God to endow his creatures is that of letting oil 
these little jokes." A member of the bar. who had been 
undciiiiiuiiig liiiii for remaining in Tyler's cabinet, yet pre- 
tended to l)e a friend, obsequiously entering his oiKce, lie 
turned from liis desk \\itli a glance, not very god-like, tliat 
sent the untimely and unwelcome visitor to the door: whiK' 
he. Webster, quietly continued iiis writing, with the wttrd 
"pup]>y."" which some one hapi)ened to ovi'rhear. The eoii- 
versatioii at a dinner-jiarty i)roving to be leilious antl ilull. 
he early left the table and told liis host he considered it 
a protracted Methodist meeting, and unless something of 
real eoiieerii were to be discussed it was the last time he 
should appear. "A Daniel come lo judgment," was Justice 



13 

Story's greeting, as he entered a company in debate. If the 
Wliig \n\vty breaks up. what is to become of me, lie asked, 
Avliere I was one of thousands to hear in FaniMiil HalL 
What a question of room for that ovcrshadmviug form, larger 
than the party ! He was unaware of his own magniiicence ; 
and when, in a circle of which I was one, a connoisseur of 
eloquence reminded him of that famous passage, the close of 
his Plymouth action, he said, "I do not remember it," lifting 
his hand in liis ludw. George Ticknor said his head swelled 
ahnost to bursting under the battery of that address; and 
a lady still living tells me she sat in the blaze of his eyes, 
while he made to the clergy in the house liis tremendous 
adjuration for a joint crusade against the slave-trade. But 
the grandeur to him was past, and he could forget it in 
new tasks. He would scarce have coveted even the highest 
ofhce, had he known it could not '' add one cubit to his 
stature '' ; but, in over-craving it, his natural dimensions must 
crouch. 

I saw jNIr. Webster first in Brunswick, Me., on his way to 
court in Topsham across the Androscoggin. The students, 
of whom I was one, flocked, as to a supernatural spectacle, 
to watch him get out of his chaise, rub his forehead, take his 
horse to the stable, and shake the dust from his dress, which 
had, I recollect, the tawny color of his cheeks. A simple, 
unaffected, homespun man he seemed, without airs, absorbed 
in thought, scarce observing what was about him, insensibly 
surpassing all. I heard Mm afterwards in the court room, in 
the Kepresentatives' Chamber yonder for certain Remon- 
strants, in Faneuil Hall once and again, in the Hail way 
Chamber for Kossuth, at Bunker Hill, in the lecture room at 
Providence, and in private talk ; and my recollection is that 
he could be moderate and interesting too. No man could so 
make a listener tremble, or kindle with easy effort and a level 
speech. He would not, he said, " stram himself to kill a fly." 
His voice was both clear and deep. There ran through the 
audience a sliiver and a glow. His presence was influence ; 
and, as said Edward Everett, himself a master only second in 
rank, ''■ His words were always words of fire." Yet the 



14 

lines in him, if large, were well defined. He was the pyramid 
or Parthenon, not a Gothic monster, and never Avill be a myth. 
He was English while American, — a firm-set summit with a 
base of flame, tropic and temperate too, the spii-it come back 
among us of that Burke, whom, for his speeches on concilia- 
tion with and taxation of America, we must ever gratefully 
honor and admire, and borrowing fi-om him to improve upon 
it tliat fine figure of the British power, which, as we are 
familiar with Webster's version of it, I will from the original 
quote : " By such management, by the operation of feeble 
councils, so paltry a sum as threepence in the eyes of a 
financier, so insignificant an article as tea in the eyes of a 
philosopher, have sliaken the pillars of a commercial empire 
that circled the whole globe.'* Webster adds: "the morning 
di'um-beat, keeping company with the hours and circling the 
earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of tlie 
martial airs of England." In his grain and method was mag- 
nanimity unexampled, worthy of imitation. If music may 
afford an illustration, modern eloquence is an organ with 
many stops, the vox humana being chief, the ancient is a 
cymbal or trumpet and harp. 

Beyond any contemporary, Webster had, with vast compass 
of theme, the clarion voice, on which, however, less than witli 
any other orator, his record in our letters depends. In his 
matchless words, eloquent without gesture or tone, he -still 
lives " and will live. Like a huge, smokv crystal is his great, 
if clouded, name. But what gem is perfect in clearness, 
color, and weight, and needs not to be cut? Even the 
Kohinoor has lost half its size. Can we not praise the anti- 
slavery virtue, without altogether blaming the politic counsels 
that regulated its heat? lliis any of our political goodness 
been without s[)ot ■.•' Had not our righteousness an alh)y of 
self-righteousness? Were nt)t some of our philanthropists 
vaint'-lorious ejioists? I liave seen an I'ud nf all human 
perfection. Does not the nuiral sentiment, jtarting couq»any 
with love, degenerate into hatred and spite? But for their 
jealousy. (|uarrelsomeness, and conceit, some of our spokes- 
men for freedom had been inmuiculate. Then there were 



( 

15 

loud and able-bodied persons who slunk from the ordeal of 
battle they precipitated, and were never seen at the front. 
It has been said of Mr. Webster, two of whose sons died in 
the service, — one in Mexican, the other in our Civil War, — 
he halted for a time between two opinions. Was it wrong to 
hesitate at the dread alternative, and was it holy to be head- 
long ? Channing hesitated, Lincoln hesitated, wanted to save 
the country with or without slavery, knowing that the nation 
only could protect black and white, and, therefore, nation- 
ality and humanity nuist be reconciled, go together, and be- 
come one ! Was he the recreant, and was Fremont the saint ? 
Of two possible explanations for any man's course, shall we 
choose the worst? If you insist that in Webster's purpose 
there was no patriotism, but only office-seeking, little and 
vile, was his sole, settled, and rooted aim, all we can say is, 
May the charitable consideration you deny to him never from 
God or man be lacking to you ! Who of us will ever enter 
heaven, unless mercy opens the door ? If any one think, as 
no doubt many do even now, the purchase of emancipation 
was too dear, I shall not agree with him, nor shall I pro- 
nounce whether, in wishing for delay and hoping for peaceful 
methods, he were Christian or infidel, philosopher or fool ; 
and, if judgment without grace is to be passed on us all ac- 
cording to our deserts, the sufferers will not be on any one 
side. They will be both accusers and arraigned. Mr. Web- 
ster honestly shrank from the heroic treatment which our 
sick and wounded body politic required. But to his country 
he never meant to be false. " He lovetli our nation," said 
the Jewish elders, respecting a pagan Roman centurion, to 
the author of the Christian faith. It might be inscribed 
on the tomb of the man in whose eloquence, as fit to our con- 
dition now as it was half a century ago, this nation is en- 
shrined ; and, for the sake of whose succor in our need, let 
us coiidonL'. while we deplore, his faults or defects. In his 
[)age, (lur nationality is enlivened, not embalmed. We may, 
unlike him, have been guilty of im iniibreaks of passion. 
Are the inward chambers of our imagery pure? Is our 
benevolence a doctrine or a fact? It is on the register of 



16 

tlie old church in Franklin, as it was in the profession of all 
his life, that he was a Christian in belief. I should be 
ashamed, he said, of a Saviour I could comprehend. 

So for the occasion I speak. The tinal judgment is yet 
to he rendered. The jury, divided, has not brought sentence 
in, and history pauses over her pen. Eulogy, apology, and 
charge mix and contend. Individual impressions are still 
in order, and every one who has had opportunity for observa- 
tion may not innnodestly give his own. 1 shall say, then. 
Daniel Webster was of a nature essentially noble and good. 
But, for a great man. in the hour of temptation, he proved 
in the end to be weak, with a bias of ambition that swerved 
him unawares; not perfidious, but the prey of his own logic, 
till he substituted argument for intuitive reason and right. 
Yet his defection was of less moment than they who indict 
liim suppose. The controversy between liberty and slavery 
had gone too far to be checked; the old and new centuries 
clashed. The opposing thunder-clouds from North and 
South, civilization and barbarism must meet. Even his 
hand, liowever well put forth, could no longer have held 
the whirlwind back. He died disappointed, broken-hearted. 
In the carcass of this lion was found the honey-comb, 
much sweetness, and none of the venom and revenge 
which even conscience, enraged and outraged, sometimes 
contracts. Through purgatory, he has reached paradise ; 
and perhaps some of us would rather meet him there than 
his sharpest assailants, upright as they felt, and not guilty 
of his particular sins. Harsh condemnation is loud profes- 
sion. From both may we be kept ! 



W 73 



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